


The First Step

by MallowAtomica



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Early in Canon, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:21:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24960739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MallowAtomica/pseuds/MallowAtomica
Summary: Owen Paris tried to teach Tom and Kathryn the same lessons.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 14





	The First Step

Tom hadn't recognized her at first, standing there on the rim of the ditch where he was working. The sun was behind her and he squinted as he peered upward. A Starfleet captain, hands on her hips and gravel in her voice. Good looking, he thought, but obviously full of herself. All Starfleet captains were full of themselves. This one introduced herself as Kathryn Janeway and offered to change his life.

She had served with his father on the Al-Batani, his science officer, she told him, and something stirred in the back of Tom's mind. Had he met her before, when he was a teenager? Maybe she had been to the house, a Christmas party or something? He had the feeling there was something important about her that he had forgotten.

It was only after she left that he made the connection. Janeway. She was the one who had been captured with his father. "Interrogated" by Cardassians who hadn't cared one way or the other if they got answers.

\-----

Tom had been eleven when his father got back from that mission. He got out of bed one night to grab a glass of water and heard his mother crying in the living room.

He didn't know what to do. He stood perfectly still and listened. "It's normal to feel this way about what you went through, Owen," his mother said. Tom realized with a shock that she wasn't the one doing the crying. It was his father. His father, the larger than life, tougher than a targ Starfleet admiral, who had been telling him for years now that crying was weak. "I'm not upset about myself, dammit!" His voice was choked and angry. "I'm upset about Janeway."

Julia Paris' voice was soothing, "It wasn't as bad for her, love. You were the one they --"

"OF COURSE IT WAS BAD FOR HER!" Tom heard his father inhale, deeply, shakily. "She's only 22 years old. Just a kid and look what I led her into."

Silence.

"I'm ashamed to face her."

Tom slipped back upstairs and drank water from the bathroom sink. He stayed awake the rest of the night, thinking about his father and Janeway in the hands of the Cardassians. Not about what the Cardassians had actually done. No one had told him that and his thoughts skittered away in a hot panic any time he wondered. Instead, he thought about what his father had said, about why he was crying. Janeway couldn't really be a kid, Tom thought. If she was 22 years old, she was definitely a grown up, old enough to be in Starfleet and vote and get married. It figured that his father thought she was a kid, though. He thought Tom was a kid, too. Had his father told Janeway not to cry? That it was weak? Had he tried not to cry himself? Had he tried to act like a tough guy in front of her? Probably, Tom thought bitterly. Admirals. It's what they do.

\-----

On their seventeenth night in the Delta Quadrant, the Kazon attacked without warning.

Tom and Harry caught the same turbolift to the bridge. The lift car stopped on the next deck and Captain Janeway tumbled in, as if she had been leaning against the doors waiting for them to open. She was wearing a pink satin nightgown, with her boots tucked under her arm and her uniform jacket in her hand. No one spoke. The captain's communicator was pinned to her jacket. She had an open comm link to the bridge and was listening to the action. She shoved her boots unceremoniously at Tom, who held them while she pulled on her jacket. Then they were on the bridge and he was running for his station, tossing the captain's boots in the general direction of her chair as he rushed past.

Voyager successfully destroyed the engines of the lead Kazon ship and managed to jump to high warp before the commander of the second ship could decide what to do.

The captain congratulated her team, gave Tom a cheeky half smile, and said, "Well, I guess I can put my boots on now."

\-----

Tom and Harry ate breakfast together the next morning. Tom was gritty eyed from only two hours sleep, but Harry was disgustingly cheerful.

"I feel a lot better after seeing the Captain on the bridge in her pajamas during the attack," he was saying.

"Harry. What?!" Tom was not awake enough for wherever this was going.

"With her pajamas on, and fumbling around with her boots like that. You know how it is." Harry was looking intense and a bit anxious, as if he thought the captain might suddenly appear and scold him for noticing that she didn't wear her uniform twenty four hours a day. "It's good to see her being so normal, doing something that we might do."

"Of course she's normal. She puts her pink nightie on one leg at a time just like you and me." Tom paused. "When you were a kid, did you think that the teachers lived at the school?"

"No!" Harry sounded ever so slightly defensive, and flushed as he tried to ignore his friend's smirk long enough to explain himself. "Look, I know the captain is a regular human person who does regular human person things. But, well, the way she talks to the Kazons, how she gets sassy with them. It's like they don't even make her nervous. Or when we were trapped in that event horizon, she never batted an eye. She's so, well, larger than life, I guess. So tough."

"She puts a lot of that on, Harry. No," he added quickly, seeing the appalled look on the younger man's face. "I didn't mean it like that. I know for a fact that she's brave, a lot braver than I am. But that doesn't mean that she's so badass she never gets scared." Tom pointed the end of his fork at Harry and made little poking motions for emphasis. "All senior officers want you to think they are larger than life and tougher than a targ. Captains, admirals, it's what they do. They're just --"

Something shifted in Tom's brain.

_Just a kid and look what I led her into!_

_Had he tried to act like a tough guy in front of her?_

_I'm ashamed to face her._

"Just what?" asked Harry, who was 21 years old and definitely a grown up, old enough to be in Starfleet and vote and get married.

"Just ... just acting that way to help us. The good ones, anyway. Sometimes they fuck it up royally, but sometimes it's the only thing they think will, they can't think of another way --." Tom cleared his throat, which was suddenly scratchy, and spoke slowly and carefully. "They try their damndest to act tough because they're trying to show us how to be strong."

\-----

Tom had a long road to travel before he was truly at peace with his father. But years later, he looked back and understood that he took his first step on the morning of Day 18 in the Delta Quadrant.


End file.
